Created especially for the PARMA 360 Festival and set up at the Palazzo del Governatore [Governor’s Palace], Ánemos is the work of artists Edoardo Tresoldi, Studio Azzurro and Max Magaldi, who pooled their skills for the occasion.
PARMA 360 Festival
The Festival, now in its sixth edition, is dedicated to contemporary visual arts and in the 2022 edition seeks to investigate the theme of TRANSITIONS/LANDSCAPES interpreted as a space-time continuum involving and uniting seemingly contrasting elements. Like the concrete and imaginary space, the inside with the outside, boundaries and open space. All of this relates to buildings belonging to Parma’s historical and artistic heritage.
Ánemos: the installation signed by Tresoldi, Studio Azzurro and Max Magaldi
Ánemos takes its place in this scenario as a choral installation hosted inside the Governor’s Palace. The work combines three different forms of artistic expression: the sculptural part of Tresoldi’s ‘Absent Matter’, the video projections by Studio Azzurro and the soundtrack by Max Magaldi. The synergy of these three styles is intended to interpret the passage of time over the course of a day, from dawn to night, through a harmonious combination of ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ that evoke changes in light, sounds and shadows.
The evocative architecture created by Tresoldi, in Cavatorta wire mesh, acts as a stage for the visual work “Cieli d’Italia” [Skies of Italy] by Studio Azzurro accompanied by the sounds from Magaldi. This simulation will have all eyes gazing upwards to admire an imaginary Italy through a sky that changes during the hours of the day, from dawn to night, passing through midday and sunset, in an attempt to intercept the relationship between man and nature by transferring it into an enclosed environment, in a dimension suspended between real and virtual.
Using the personal device provided, visitors can vary the sound elements within the space to create their own unique path of contemplation.
A reflection on the meaning of landscape
Ánemos perfectly embodies the central theme of the Festival: a reflection on the contemporary meaning of landscape and how its perception has changed in recent years. As Chiara Canali, one of the two artistic directors of the Festival, explains:
“Starting with Ánemos, the one we knew would inspire the main theme of the festival, we wanted to reflect on landscape, one of the most crucial topics of the third millennium. And that is in fact what Tresoldi is interested in, portraying the landscape through architecture. At the same time, however, the landscape is considered in relation to the dimension of time, past, present and future. Today, the perception of time has changed considerably, also following the experience of the pandemic. So this work stems from the desire to recreate an open space in a closed environment“.
Ánemos is complemented by two parallel paths that amplify its meaning: Vito Frangione’s photographic exhibition and Bianca Felicori’s descriptive texts that pay homage to and narrate Tresoldi’s work, and Studio Azzurro’s notepads with a focus on their artistic journey.
Photo by Roberto Conte